Signs - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

There’s an old saying about the concerns of giving someone enough rope and they’ll end up hanging you with it. That could almost be said about audiences with M. Night Shyamalan’s career in the early 2000s! Before he went to The Village, took a dunk with The Lady in the Water, or smelled the breeze with The Happening, we gave Shyamalan a lot of rope with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. With the uncanny knack for combining personal human dramas with traditional genre fare, the director burst onto the scene with a trifecta of box office blockbusters and a reputation for clever storytelling that commands attention to this day. Not the best of the three big hits, Signs is nonetheless a heartfelt drama about a family processing their grief while coming together under incredible circumstances. 

I’ll dispense with the recap of the plot since by this point most folks who care have seen Signs already. While I don’t think it’s a flawless feature, I think it still stands as one of Shyamalan’s best. The principal fault I have with the film is this is about when the writer/director dynamo started putting a lot more weight on convenience. Now, that’s part of the trick for this film, it asks the audience to question what’s happening. Do you believe these are conveniences and random events or do you have faith that that nothing is random or convenient? But that’s the clever part about Shyamalan’s earliest films, he’s inviting the audience behind the curtain to see how the magic works. Later films would be a lot less clever, and the conveniences far too much of a stretch to bend for. 

Anchoring Signs is a genuinely strong human drama about a father coming to terms with the death of his wife, the loss of his faith, and somehow trying to raise his two children in the process. In this film, Mel Gibson delivers one of his best everyman performances. He’s not inspiring an army. He’s not dislocating his shoulder to get out of straight jackets. He’s not traveling the wasteland looking for gasoline. He’s just an average farmer. And when otherworldly events arrive as crop circles in his cornfield, he must confront his issues if he and his family are to survive. With Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin as his two children and Joaquin Phoenix as his aimless younger brother, we have the perfect character mixture for this suspenseful alien invasion story to play out. 

And boy howdy is it suspenseful! What I love most about what Shyamalan manages with Signs is how he steadily ramps up the suspense. It starts slowly with kids screaming in the cornfield and builds to a shadowy figure standing on top of a barn. Then it breaks out and makes this small isolated incident a global phenomenon but then pulls back tight to the family unit so that something as innocent as a baby monitor can ramp up tension. As a post-9/11 film, it deftly touches upon our collective obsession with news updates and the stress of trying to explain the unexplainable.

But then, there’s the whole “water” thing. I’m not going to go into that just on the off chance there’s anyone interested in this disc who hasn’t seen it already, but in the universe where our Alien Invaders exist, they probably picked the worst planet to conquer. It’s the weakness of Shyamalan's over-explaining to make some of the faith vs convenience themes work that holds Signs back from reaching the heights of The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. But compared to some of his later films, these stumbles are mere bumps in the road that you can easily travel over and still enjoy the finale.

As a whole I really enjoy Signs and it’s a film I come back to every couple of years. As a father, I now relate more to Mel Gibson’s Graham than I did in my 20s adding another level of appreciation to the film. I love that the action plays out at an isolated farmhouse as a fitting tribute to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. I enjoy that we really don’t get a great look at our alien invaders until the last possible moment ensuring we’re more afraid of what we don’t see. And then I think the sound design of this film was impeccable. So yeah, not Shyamalan’s best, but far away from being his worst. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
Signs invades 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray courtesy of Disney in a new two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital set. The 4K is pressed on a BD66 disc with a repressing of the old 2008 BD-50 disc to serve up the 1080p and extra features. Both discs are housed in a standard sturdy black case with identical slipcover artwork.

Entering the 4K scene, M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs beams down for a very welcome 2160p 1.85:1 HDR10 upgrade. Back in 2008, Signs was a showcase disc for what 1080p could offer. But that was 14 years ago, technology has changed a lot and this film greatly benefits from those advancements. We have a world that offers tons of full daylight scenes combined with the terrifying deadly darkness of night and this transfer pingpongs from those extremes beautifully. In daylight, we have a full appreciation of the late-summer golden harvest color scheme. At night, we have limited sight of low light, deep inky dark places, and obscured shadows where any creepy thing could be lurking.

Throughout details never falter. We get to see all of the tiny production design details of the Hess farmhouse, and a lot of close-ups to examine facial features, costumes, and so forth all gaining significant ground over the old 2008 Blu-ray. Film grain is tighter, and better rendered for a more cinematic visual apparel. While I lament this film didn’t benefit from Disney’s recent move towards Dolby Vision on disc, this HDR10 grade is impressive on its own. Highlighting dark spaces and shadows, there’s more depth to the image than the previous disc. Colors are appropriately saturated maintaining that emphasis on golden shades. At first, I felt like the HDR grade brought it in a tad too dark, but then looking back at the old disc, I could appreciate how much better the limited light sources and shadows came through. All around a very welcome upgrade.

For this outing, we hear a new DTS-HD MA 5.1 track. The 2008 Blu-ray rolled in with an LPCM 5.1 mix and doing the disc flippies for a number of sequences, there’s really very little difference between the two. Between replaying the scenes where they chase the alien off the roof, or when Mel is in the cornfield alone at night, or when they’re all holding the baby monitor, I really strained to hear any kind of difference. So much so that I got to the point where I felt like I was trying to convince myself there was a difference. This DTS track stays true to the LPCM version by maintaining that creepy quietness and allowing those startling little clicks and clacks or bumps and thumps to stand out. When it needs to get loud and wall-to-wall it does so with grace allowing for some impressive imaging and space. The sounds of those aliens running around the house while they’re huddled in the dark basement are just as creepy and effective. Some may complain about not having an Atmos track, but for this film’s sound design, I can’t see how that’d be much of a beneficial difference-maker. 

On the bonus features side, it’s a case of same-old, same-old. Unfortunately, nothing new was produced for this release which is a shame. Considering it’s been 22 years since the theatrical run, our cast and director are in very different places and a retrospective would have been a welcome addition. Mel Gibson has been canceled and uncanceled, Phoenix turned Joker into a musical, the kids have grown up and Shyamalan’s own daughter is now directing films. As far as the archival extras go, they’re all still very good (even in SD). The making-of documentary is the kind of deep dive detailed look at a production that is increasingly rare for modern releases. So, if you’ve never worked your way through those, they’re all worth picking into.

• Deleted Scenes
• Making Signs
• Storyboards: Multi-Angle Features
• Night’s First Alien Movie

Signs isn’t the best of Shyamalan’s films, but it’s damned entertaining. It might rest on a few too many conveniences, it might be a sign of some of the director’s worst tendencies to come, but with a terrific cast, a smart premise, and some expert-level suspense building, the film is as tight and tense today as it was 22 years ago. Now we get the benefit of enjoying the film in the glory of 4K! The HDR10 transfer is a notable step up over the previous disc with a DTS-HD MA 5.1 track that stands strong. Sadly no new bonus features that weren’t already on the old DVD or Blu-ray, but they’re still worth checking out. Another spooky flick gets a solid 4K upgrade in time for Halloween. Highly Recommended